Mort Elementary School — Classroom Scene and Morning-DJ Account
At Mort Elementary in Tampa, third-grade teacher Christina Weaver leads her students in dancing while a DJ plays music in the classroom — an unconventional scene that’s become part of a turnaround effort years in the making. Hillsborough County Public Schools just posted its first overall A district grade in more than a decade, and district leaders point to a program called the Transformation Network as a key piece of how some of its most struggling schools climbed out of the D and F ranks.
The network launched in 2020 as a turnaround initiative for some of the district’s most vulnerable schools, according to Hillsborough County Public Schools’ own year-in-review report. Sources differ on exactly how many schools joined at the start — the district’s report and a 2025 account from Tampa Bay Beacons both put the figure at 45, while a more recent account from Yahoo News cites roughly 50. Either way, the approach centered on intensive data monitoring, individualized plans for each student and a standardized curriculum, as the Tampa Bay Times reported in its original coverage of the effort, titled Hillsborough set out to transform its D and F schools. Here’s how.
Grades Climbed As Schools Graduated Out of the Program
Schools transition out of the Transformation Network after three years of sustained improvement, per the Times’ reporting. The district’s own year-in-review document found that 38 of the original 45 schools saw school-grade increases during the program’s first two years, and that the number of D- and F-rated schools fell from 28 in 2020 to five in 2022 — an 82 percent drop. By 2025, the network had narrowed to 39 schools, and it served 38 by the time of the Times’ most recent reporting…